GATHERING STORM

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23352, 11 June 1941, Page 10

GATHERING STORM

CURRENT BOOKS . . .-»ig§||

an OBSERVER IN BERLIN * * '. v‘* Ambassador Dodd’s , | Edited by William E. Dodd, Jr;**. M Martha Dodd. With an introdws >f| tioAhy Charles A. Beard. McUr Gollancz Ltd. 452 pp. (12/6 net) ,• v| President Roosevelt, in June, 1833, '• sent Professor Dodd from nis chair of • vs history at the University of Chicago to;' I the United States Embassy in Berlin.“Your work as a liberal, and .as a , i scholar and your 'study at a German: \ university,” he/safd, ‘‘are the mam ! reasons for my wishing to appoint you, : It is a difficult post afad you have cul- '[ tural approaches would help, I - -i. want an Amerjcan>«Kal in Germany as a standing er /le. Ambassador i Dodd’s diary i& V, /e-year record o£ ? failure, not because!-he was inadequate to the President’s trust or because that was mispurposed, but because there, was never a chance of deflecting German policy and hardly the shadow of a ' chance, in the confusion and folly that -' ruled Europe, of countering it. Af • first Mr Dodd was inclined to put more or less faith in the ‘‘moderates”-.of , Hitler’s Cabinet and of the Foreign ■ ,i Office: von Neurath t von Schwerin- ' Krosigk, Schacht, Schmitt, von Billow; ; Dieckhoff. Those he had most reason ’ to trust lost their places or died. For, . the others, it remains doubtful whether, . they gradually submitted and hardened , themselves to the temper of the extremists or whether it was their patf to gain time by pretences. Certainly, ' when German. rearmament was well; , advanced, the Rhineland reoccupied, ‘ German-Italian policy aligned, France ‘> outwitted, and Spain delivered to Franco, Mr Dodd ceased to hear the,'-, ; softs:, conciliatory voices. But they,-, had never deceived him. He had known, , that whatever they said, Germany wa? -*, headed for war, under Hitler, Goering, : and Goebbels; that the possibility of a movement to throw them from power was remote; and that the moderates, if moderates they were, could at best postpone war. As for the liberal, cul- ; tured elements in Germany, to whom he could speak and appeal with sympathy, his contacts with them were numerous but disappointing. They, could criticise arid deplore; but they ... could not stand against the regime that was destroying their world and its values. There were few Niemollers. . If this is a melancholy criticism of intellectual Germany it is only fair to add that Mr Dodd noted with dismay : the tendency of , members of the foreign diplomatic and consular- services to drift from repugnance into asort of sneaking sympathy and admiration for the Nazi system. He himself, from his earliest days to the last, could scarcely bear to meet Hitler, Goering, v and Goebbels or to shake their murderous hands. Yet it is very clear, that he • carried out his duties with scrupulous care and correctitude. Equally clear, ' and truly pathetic, is the evidence of his - sense of hopelessness in the face of the gathering storm, the hopeless- • ness not only of a diplomat but of. a philosophical historian, well able to understand the forces at play, and of a humane and liberal thinker, appalled by their tragic threat to human happi- ■ nes and enlightenment WHAT IS “ KNOWING ” ? The Analysis of Knowledge. By Ledger Wood. Allen and Unwin. 263 pp, (12/6 net.) ' The Associate Professor of Philosophy in .Princeton University has written this book on what he calls, theknowledge situation. A common error of epistemologists, or theorists .of knowledge, is, in his opinion, to make use of defective psychological premises. , On the other hand, no psychological. analysis of knowledge is significant > if it is philosophically naive. Professor , Wood attempts to discern a single structural pattern underlying every type of cognitive situation, whether' it be sensory, perceptual, introspective, conceptual, categorical, formal,, or valuational' knowledge. He begins by showing what he understands by ■ the term ‘‘cognitive tyqn^enflenee," The greater part of work is taken up with the.-itiidy/bfJ • the cognitive situation, under the headings mentioned above. He also has something to say of our perception of “things” and cur knowledge of other selves. In his final chapter, Mr Wood brings a very able treatment of hi?subject to its conclusion by a consideration of the nature of knowledge in relation to meaning and truth,; He rejects the traditional doctrines as to the nature of truth. This he, define? as “the correspondence,” or' as he pre? fers to designate it, “the congruence, between the meaning of a proposition and a factual situation,” Mr Wood is * ■ not unmindful of the positivistic doctrines of knowledge, fashionable among some present-day philosophers. An attentive reader will And that the author, has, however, as he <SSlms, tried to do justice “by the realistic claims of knowledge.”

NOTE-BOOK

Empire Migration Issued as one of a series of sociolo- ' ; gical monographs from the Statistics .... Division of the Social Science Depart- 7. ment of the University of Liverpool, % Mr R. S. Walshaw’s Migration to and ! from the British Isles (Jonathan Cape. 94 pp. 8/6 net. Through Whitcombs and Tombs Ltd.) is a useful examination of population movements, chiefly between Great Britain and the Dominions, and of the State policies and other factors that have influenced them. Mr Walshaw shows that the ’ Empire Settlement Act never reached the quantitative results aimed at, though it was qualitatively fairly sue- 'j cessful; and that during and since the ’ depression assisted migration has come 7 to a standstill. Meanwhile, the study -if of population trends has brought the’ ‘ desiderata of policy under question., ■' But it remains clear, as he says, that the natural replacement rate in Aus- - tralia and New Zealand and possibly Canada makes immigration an impor- } - tant object, if they are to be “adequately peopled.” - Indian Unity Mr Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s secre-, tary and editor of “Harijan,” has done i students of the Indian nationalist movement a considerable service by-,, 7 writing his biography 'of Mania?*,, Abul Kalam Azad (Allen and Unwin. 191 pp. 3/6 net). The fact that the Maulana, a Moslem, was elected pre- . sident of the All India National Con- ■ gress by 1854 votes to 183, in March pi ' last year, points directly to the maulinterest of this book, which reviews 7 the Hindu-Moslem problem as a much ■ less intractable one than it is gener- / ally thought to be. The Maulana op- ; poses, with wide Moslem support, the Moslem League’s proposal for a parti- , : tipn of India to solve it and stands with Gandhi for a . Constituent Assembly which will freedom as a To® final chapters throw a vefyrvk&r lighv . on the present situation of deadlock between the British Government ana the Congress. • Numerology Miss Hettie Templeton offers her work on Numbers and Their Influence (Temple Press. 141 pp. 6 /-) not only to help people understand ana live rightly their own lives but principally with the hope that it may help mothers to know and train their Chitdren.” She has. she says, _ during s several years of broadcasting in Aus- , tralia, “found out and proved much . is new in the science” of num- . bers, and reveals it now “for the first :. time in this .book.”—Through Angus apd Robertson Ltd. , .-j I i Music Messrs Robertson and Mullens Ltd have issued the third edition of Kent Barry’s Music and the Listener UA pp, 2s Gd). Professor Bernard Heinze of the University of Melbourne, in * new introduction to this edition praises Dr. Barry’s “guide to musica. understanding” as one most precise!} . , and expertly adapted to the purpose of promoting “real enjoyment., 0 music.-